


Scale

by doublejoint



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:21:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Remi's girlfriend slowly transforms into an alligator.
Relationships: Remi Puguna/Alligator, Remi Puguna/Other(s)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Scale

**Author's Note:**

> [remi has a girlfriend who was turned into an alligator and lives in the sewer](https://twitter.com/denkimouse/status/1175573314196033536?lang=en)
> 
> this is that, taken somewhat seriously
> 
> i didn't want to use names because we don't know her name but it would be awkward for remi's name to be mentioned sooo
> 
> contains body horror, discussion of disease, breakup

Her skin grows dry. She sleeps too close to the space heater when he’s away; the windows are shut tightly because the winter’s worse than this part of the world’s seen in a while. He tries to work out better hours, but Burning Rescue is a full-time job, and the Mad Burnish start fires at every hour. They seem to prefer the night, actually, and they’ve all let the thought creep up on them, not so articulated even in their minds, that the burnish flame against the dark sky is almost beautiful.

Perhaps this is punishment, unfairly doled out, on him for thinking it and on her for being close to him, to hurt him worse. 

Her skin begins to flake, perhaps as if it’s made of scales. She scrubs at it in the shower with a pumice stone, leaving her skin red if softer to the touch. For the night. The flakes are back the next day, dead skin drawn up through her pores as if overflowing, like a geyser. Her showers grow longer. He wakes up on the middle of the night, and without his glasses he can see them forming already on her forearms. They look green, but it must be the low light.

Her teeth feel sharper when she kisses him, scraping across his lips and tearing off the skin like when he burns his mouth on coffee at work, too hot from their malfunctioning machine (hot, the way the others like it, but he can never accustom himself; he always prefer the stuff she makes in their little machine that was once his brother’s and has kept them rolling along since they moved in together). He tells himself that he’s imagining it, that his mouth is sensitive. It’s putting on and taking off all that gear. He needs to floss more, or see a dentist.

He catches her staring in the mirror, wearing only her underwear. She is lost in thought, turned around with a craned neck, her finger tracing over the base of her spine. When she sees him in the mirror, her eyes fill with tears, and he feels a lump rise in his throat. She guides his fingers over her skin, a protrusion that he still can’t see. It’s not from tension; it must be a tumor, a malignant growth.

“You need to go to the doctor.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not that.”

For a minute, he’s afraid that she’s going to say she’s Burnish, that she lost control and did something she shouldn’t have, that the physical changes are a result of all that, that she will have to go, but he is prepared to follow her. He would go with her, anywhere he could, though perhaps that makes him a fool. (And, well, he’s uniquely equipped to deal with fire.)

“Promise me you’ll be okay,” she tells him.

The other shoe doesn’t drop. There’s no fire in her hands; her body even feels colder wrapped in his arms than usual. She speaks in a rasp and turns around before he can kiss her goodnight.

And then she is in pain, and he is helpless. She won’t give up what she is, as if there’s someone who can hear, as if saying it would break some charm of protections, and perhaps it would. He has seen people fell buildings with fire that lives under their skin; he has seen his comrades walk through the flames with no fear and worn-down protections and come back alive, unhurt, following crates full of scared, rescued people. Nothing surprises him. But this scares him, because he doesn’t know what’s next, if it’s a burst of flame, a drop into a volcano, falling from a great height, a blast of water and ice, or something else. Any way he’ll be caught flat-footed, unable to catch up to her wherever this is making her go.

She shivers and he turns on the last lamp, wraps her in another blanket.

Her face is lengthening; her bones are changing. Her teeth are sharper, yes, but more of them grow in every day, breaking through the tender new skin inside her mouth. Her skin has taken on a greenish tint, and her hair falls out in clumps. She refuses to leave the house; her hands are too stiff to clutch her cell phone or the TV remote. He takes a leave from work; she refuses to go to the doctor. 

“You’d probably need to take me to a veterinarian,” she rasps, on one of the last days she does speak, one of the last days she resembles the conception of her that still lives in his mind. 

Her skin is a vibrant, dark, green, scaly and leathery to the touch; her eyes have migrated to the sides of her head. Her mouth barely opens, and her limbs have shrunk. Her tail is long and heavy, and she can’t sit comfortably anymore. She lies on her stomach, but it’s easier for her to see that way.

It’s an attempt at humor, but it misses the mark, bringing everything back around to the horrible truth. He feeds her raw meat that she swallows whole; she soaks in the bathtub most of the day, and that is not nearly enough for her already. She needs things he cannot give her when they’re like this.

He needs her.

She leaves when he’s out at the grocery store, haggling prices on the meat. The door’s open, a trail of wet alligator footprints leading to an open manhole. It’s obvious, almost absurd, the sewer alligator a myth come to life, except it’s the woman he loves. He calls her name down the manhole but there is no reply, only an echo that dies quickly, and the sound of water far away. 

She’s left him no message, no way of finding her, but then--what use does she have for someone who can’t communicate with her, who lives on land, who knows her as someone else? 

He knows the answer. She’d struck the smallest blow she could, and he hopes she knows how grateful he is of that much.


End file.
